Keeping Hogs Healthy

I just ran across an interesting article in my newspaper. This paper is aimed at farmers, and is called AGRI-VIEW. You will not get these kinds of news articles in your metro daily. This article appeared in the november 12, 2009 issue, and addressed concerns conventional pork producers have regarding keeping their pigs and employees healthy, particularly during influenza outbreaks.

"Swine workers should adhere to the following practices:

• Wear protective clothing, preferably disposable outer garments or coveralls that are laundered at work after each use...
• Wear rubber or polyurethane boots that can be cleaned and disinfected or disposable protective shoe covers.
• Wear disposable gloves made of light-weight nitrile or vinyl or heavy duty rubber work gloves that can be disinfected.... Change gloves if they are torn or otherwise damaged. Remove gloves promptly after use, before touching non-contaminated items or environmental surfaces. Take off disposable gloves by turning them inside out over the hand and placed in the trash after use...
• Wear safety goggles to protect the mucous membranes of the eyes. Wear disposable NIOSH-certified filtering facepiece respirators ...that are the minimun level of respiratory protection. This level or higher respitatory protection might already be in use in swime operations due to other hazards that exist in the environment...
• Wear disposable, lightwieght head or hair covers to prevent contamination of hair if shower-out facilities are not avalivable.
• Discard disposable PPE properly, as well as clean and disinfect non-disposable PPE as specified in state government, industry, or USDA outbreak response guidelines."

AGRI-VIEW, november, 12, 2009 by Sarah Young

The article does not end there, but I think that's enough. This really illustrates the types of environments that our food supply is coming from. Pigs are so crowded, so stressed, and lack of ventilation causes situations that are ripe for rampant spread of viruses and other diseases. Workers need to wear rubber gloves, boots, and respirators.

We wondered after reading the above article about the untold mountains of un-recyclable biohazard waste that must come from the thousands of confinement pork farms in this country alone.

Since pigs' anatomy is so similar to ours that we use them as organ donors for humans (except of course, they have a much more sensitive sense of smell than we do), what does that do to the pigs' eyes, lungs, and sense of .... I don't know how to put this.... fear? Lack of contentment? Desperation, maybe? We know that pigs from confinement buildings have to have their tails cut off or they will chew them off of eachother out of 'boredom'. This is what we are told. Maybe it's more than boredom. Maybe they are so stressed by being raised in dark building in cages over lagoons of their own excrement they savage eachother in unnatural ways. Maybe this causes them to go a bit mad. One thing I have learned in all my years working with animals is that we are more alike than we are different. I know conditions like that do cause just about every species of animal to exhibit abnormal behaviors and to suffer ill health effects. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a zoologist to understand this. It's just common sense, and it's obvious.

I'm so glad I don't have to eat meat that is raised under those circumstances any more. We raise our pigs with access to the outdoors, they root in the dirt and get vital minerals.

They sleep outside, feel breezes on their skin, run and play, and eat healthy fresh food. No need for rubber gloves and respirators here. If you don't want to drink from that fetid stream, find a local farmer who raises their animals humanely and buy your food from them. You'll be doing the world a favor.